Cincinnatus

Cincinnatus, né Cato the Plowman, Son of Marcus, was one of the longest serving members of the Southron Court and a key instigator of its ultimate (and doomed) call for secession from House Tarres's control.

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At barely twenty-five years of age, Cato was drafted by the people of the small farming isle of Gyaros. After the retirement of their previous emissary to the Court, Courtier Athanasia, the landowners of Gyaros held a plebiscite. No records of what was said at the plebiscite but later accounts indicate that Cato had found some renowned for his ability to settle simple disputes on the island including an incident with the ownership of a goat kid, parented when someone's buck broke out of the pasture and sired it on someone else's doe.

Despite preferring a simple and quiet life on the farm, Cato left his plow never to return and took up a new name.

In his early time in the Southron Court, Cincinnatus took uncertain step into public life. The first few years he spent as a minor member of a fringe voting bloc that supported extreme isolationism for the Southron Isles and a minimalist – some would even argue non-existant – Isles-wide government. Had he hailed from any other Isle, Cincinnatus's political life would probably have been stillborn after his first votes but luckily for him, if not the future of the Southron Court, Gyaros appoints its members of the Court until their death or resignation.

As time went on, Cincinnatus realized the faults in the line of reasoning with much help and guidance from Xaq Island appointee Sorcha. For the remainder of her tenure, the two were a key pair in the Court. While they did not always see eye to eye or even vote together, their debates and soaring oratory shaped the course of the Court's agenda for the better part of a decade.

While not always in the majority, or even the sizable minority, Cincinnatus seems always to have advocated for the position he thought was best even if it was not politically adroit. This keen moral compass would prove to be the final undoing of the entire Court.

As the power of House Tarres waxed, Cincinnatus repeatedly spoke out against them. "It is the sovereign right of all people to have a voice in their own rule" was the roaring reprise of his repeated calls for the Southron Court to vote to support independence of various regions whose rule was usurped by House Tarres. The first of these votes passed almost unanimously (only two of the fifty-one members of the Court voted nay) but as these regions grew closer and closer to the Southron Isles, support waned. Eventually instead of passing, the votes failed but Cincinnatus did not stop being a motion to formally oppose each and every annexation by House Tarres.

While as Professor Estrin dan Maq pointed out, the Court functioned as a puppet government under Lord Tarres, this was achieved mostly by Lord Tarres rigging the appointment or election process on individual isles until he received a filibuster-proof majority. Because Gyaros elected its Courtiers for life, Cincinnatus could only be tamped down and not ousted.

This tamping could only persist for so long and with uncharacteristic subtlety, Cincinnatus – now a hunched old man – orchestrated one final vote to oppose Lord Tarres's control. In a vote held in the dead of night and with no floor debate, the Court voted to form a protective blockade around the Isles and to oust those of Lord Tarres's soldiers who had been quartered on Southron soil or water. As told elsewhere (see Southron Isles), the battle between House Tarres and the Southron Navy was fierce but ultimantly the small group of islands fell.

Every member of the Court was executed, cast in bronze, clad in clothes of pounded gold and silver and left in the chamber to continue "ruling." For his insolence and role in the battle that spilled Tarres blood, Cincinnatus's bronzed personage was denied clothing of any kind and sat nude in the Court for the remainder of its "rule."